Gambling on Survival

May 17 , 2025
By Kidist Yidnekachew

---

Sometimes it feels like the world has turned into a high-stakes lottery. The kind where everyone is expected to become a millionaire overnight, and if that magic does not happen by tomorrow, a quiet disappointment settles in. It is heavy, and it lingers.

Well-meaning voices from an older generation still offer advice: “Just save up for a down payment,” or “Take out a car loan and build credit.” It is guidance that once made sense, in a different time, under different conditions. Houses were more affordable then, and even those luxuries were earned after years, sometimes decades, of work. But today, the cost of nearly everything has skyrocketed. And yet, the expectation to catch up, to succeed, to accumulate, persists.

That kind of pressure does not just weigh down, it corrodes. It breeds a constant sense of failure for not reaching milestones that were never realistically within reach. And in that tension between expectation and reality, something darker takes root: desperation.

That is when the headlines begin to mirror nightmares. Stories of young people vanishing, of journeys across borders that end in silence. People risk everything on the hope of better work, a better life. But more often than not, those stories do not have happy endings.

Only a few make it through with something to show for it, some comfort, maybe even prosperity. But many more are broken along the way. Some never arrive. Others never return.

A domestic worker once made that choice. She went through the official channels, papers in hand, and still, the cost was steep. On countless days she called in tears, worn down by the sheer weight of the work and the loneliness. She toughed it out, determined to pay her debts, but the misery never lifted. She counted the days, not with hope, but with exhaustion.

More recently, her family faced another blow. One of her relatives disappeared without warning. No goodbyes, no final message. She left behind unpaid wages and personal belongings. The silence was alarming. Days later, the truth emerged: she and a friend had set out to cross a border. No visa. No protection. Just a desperate plan.

The journey itself defies imagination. Robbery, violence, and exploitation lie in wait at every step. Women, in particular, face unimaginable risks. Some are lost to the desert. Others, to human traffickers. The families they leave behind are left grasping at questions that will never find answers.

And still, they leave.

Consider the young woman, kin to the domestic worker mentioned earlier. Her story is not an outlier, but part of a wider pattern rooted in economic strain. The expectations placed on her by relatives in rural areas, expectations to send money, to be the one who makes it, clashed with wages that could barely sustain her own life. The arithmetic never added up, and in the face of that, the promise of work abroad glimmered like a shortcut out of despair.

The stories that fuel these decisions are seductive. Some are based on fragments of truth, others are manipulations crafted by smugglers with much to gain. But for those standing on the edge of desperation, even a distorted success story can ignite hope. That flicker is often all it takes.

And for those who survive the journey, many find themselves trapped in a different kind of nightmare. Undocumented domestic workers in many countries, particularly under systems like kafala, where residency is tied to the employer, exist in a state of virtual bondage. Their passports are seised. Their mobility, their choices, their freedom, all disappear behind closed doors.

There, abuse festers. Long hours without rest, wages withheld without reason, verbal and physical violence. And all of it in silence, because there is nowhere to go. No support system, no way home. The isolation is absolute. The number of women who take their own lives in such conditions stands as a harrowing indictment of this hidden world.

That young woman who walked away without a word, she did not vanish into the night out of recklessness, but out of resignation. The silence of her departure, the unanswered calls, the belongings left behind, each detail speaks to a deeper reality: the immense pressure she must have felt, the belief that no other route remained open.

She likely carried with her a fear of what lay ahead, of who might exploit her, of failing the very people she hoped to support. One can only hope that, wherever she landed, the outcome was not as cruel as the possibilities she risked.

Her story, like so many buried beneath statistics, is a wake-up call. It exposes an unequal world where people are driven to gamble with their lives, not because they are reckless, but because the systems meant to support them have collapsed. It speaks to the profound imbalance that marks the global order, where safety, dignity, and basic economic security remain privileges, not rights.

What these journeys reveal is not just human resilience. They are also cries for help, and indictments of failed policy. Until those left behind are given reasons to stay—opportunities that are real, wages that are fair, futures that feel possible—these silent departures will continue.

No one should ever have to trade safety for survival. No one should walk into the unknown, hoping not to disappear.

---

PUBLISHED ON May 17,2025 [ VOL 26 , NO 1307]

---

[ssba-buttons]